Vibrato

“There’s actually a thick, five-part guitar harmony going on underneath the vocal, but it blends so well that it became more of a texture than a noticeable part. This song was inspired, in part, by the things that I want my students to learn at my online school. They send in videos, and I watch them and send back clips with advice and new exercises. I started this right in the middle of doing the album, so suddenly I was listening to a lot of guitar questions and a lot of people playing.

“Some of the elements that I try to encourage when I teach are playing with syncopation, playing with a shuffle groove, starting on beats other than ‘one' and, of course, developing killer vibrato and bending.

“I thought I should practice what I preach, so this song is a combination of those elements and an example of the things that are sometimes missing from typical ‘shred’ guitar. I didn’t want them to be missing, so I filled the song, and this album, with them.

“This is one of my favorite solos that I’ve ever played. I actually composed most of it by playing an electric kazoo into a overdriven Marshall amp, recording it and then figuring out how to do it on the guitar.

“Since it was an overdub, I was using my Randall isolation cabinet, and I just threw a mic in there, so some of the ‘squawk’ might be coming from my mic placement – or lack of it. But I just love that thing. It’s so rhythmic and purely from my imagination, via the kazoo, rather than relying on fingering patterns and licks that I’ve played a million times before.”